


clap your hands if you believe

by xcetera



Series: Weird SVT AUs [2]
Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fae, Changelings, Gen, Xu Ming Hao | The8-centric, idolverse, me picking aus: watch how much weird I can fit into this while still keeping them normal idols, predebut, weird that this is my second predebut svt fic, what do I know about predebut svt? nothing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-10
Updated: 2021-02-10
Packaged: 2021-03-15 22:27:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29321637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xcetera/pseuds/xcetera
Summary: Seoul might be killing him. Minghao doesn't know, but he isn't about to give up on this dream just because a little thing like his own biology doesn't want to cooperate.
Relationships: Lee Jihoon | Woozi & Xu Ming Hao | The8
Series: Weird SVT AUs [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2153784
Comments: 5
Kudos: 24





	clap your hands if you believe

**Author's Note:**

> This might not be great if you find panic attacks difficult to read. I myself am not prone to panic attacks, but when I was looking this over I realized that it's possible Minghao's reactions to his episodes come across that way. There's also some fatalistic thought here. I don't know, this is kind of a weird fic. If you get to the bottom and you think there's something I should mention in the notes, let me know.

Most days, Minghao is fine. He never would have come to Korea if he wasn’t. He is old enough to know what he is, and he can take precautions. Some days are harder than others, but the worst days are scattered, and most of the time, he can ignore it. He’s fine.

Or. He was fine.

Three months in, slumped on the floor of the shower with his head spinning yet again, he is forced to acknowledge that the bad days are coming closer together.

He doesn’t know what it is. He’s careful. He drinks milk and puts honey in his tea. His phone case is thick and made of wood and plastic, to minimize the risk of touching the steel. His earrings are gold, and he never borrows anyone else’s.

It could be the salt. He’s probably eating more of it, surrounded by trainees and eating cheap, filling food. Usually, he can eat salt and be okay, if he doesn’t eat much. He doesn’t know why, but then, he doesn’t know the _why_ of a lot of things. Why does honey help where salt hurts? Why does iron burn while gold is fine?

Why is his health getting worse the longer he is here?

He takes a deep breath and focuses on the water all around him.

It could be something in the water.

He doesn’t know.

He breathes until one of the others starts banging on the bathroom door, and then he hauls himself up.

He can’t give up three months in. No matter how much worse he feels in this place than at home, he cannot give in so quickly. He won’t do it. Not when he came this far.

0o0o0

Maybe it’s the stress.

Minghao sinks down to the floor and takes slow sips from his water bottle. He knows he is in good shape for dancing. At home, he danced for hours at a time, until he was dripping sweat and aching. It surprised him how tiring dance practice was when he arrived, but these days he feels like he’s better at practicing choreography.

It is very different from practicing freestyle forms of dance. He already knew this, of course, but this is the most choreography he has ever done in his life.

It’s definitely training him to pay more attention to details in his dancing. He doesn’t get the time to drill bboy moves like he’d like to, but Soonyoung has started inviting him to sessions, and the impact has been noticeable when Minghao gets the chance to freestyle in front of the mirror.

It’s good. Minghao’s Korean is getting better, but Soonyoung doesn’t seem to mind that he would rather dance than talk.

Still, trainee life is draining. Seoul is a big city, bigger than Minghao is used to, and he isn’t getting as much sleep as he would strictly prefer.

Seoul is a deeply human city. The energy is bracing, but sometimes it feels like there is iron in the air itself, like the ground beneath his feet is made of salt. Sometimes Minghao wonders if maybe the city doesn’t want him here.

The bad days are getting worse. He thinks. It’s hard to tell, exactly, because they aren’t getting worse in any way he recognizes. He can ignore the headaches. He can hide the dizzy spells. He can power through the burn of incidental brushes with manmade metal. He has plenty of practice.

No. The bad days are getting different. That might be worse than the bad days getting worse. He doesn’t know yet.

Minghao rolls his shoulders and sucks in a breath when the movement stretches the skin over his shoulder blade, where Seokmin clapped him on the back earlier. Minghao had hidden the wince as well as he could, and he doesn’t think Seokmin noticed.

Iron bracelets. That’s a hell of an unfortunate fashion statement for Minghao’s fellow trainees to be making. He hopes it doesn’t catch on with the others. He’s already at a disadvantage with the language barrier, and he can’t afford to alienate them by being weird about things that will seem so small. Junhui already teases him (gently, laughingly, warmly, but still teasing) about the milk and about how particular Minghao is about honey in his tea.

This is how it is for people like him. His parents have done their best to protect him, but they are human down to their blood and bones. There are only so many things they can do. Minghao has to be particular.

There are poisons in the world around him. He tries to know what they are and how to avoid them. His success record is good, but Minghao was raised by humans.

There are only so many things he can do.

0o0o0

It would be nice, Minghao thinks idly, to be able to sit in a chair.

Minghao has spent a fair amount of time in dance studios. If there are chairs to be found in them, they are always the same kind: metal folding chairs, usually as minimal as possible. The Pledis practice room is no different.

Minghao has long since gotten used to sitting on the floor. So far, he has mostly managed to avoid revealing any oddities because it.

Wouldn’t that be a stupid way to blow the secret? Then the other trainees, the people he is trying to build a career with, would think he was crazy. Assuming they understood him at all, of course. Minghao doesn’t know the word for _changeling_ in Korean. He assumes there is one, but he hasn’t looked it up.

Maybe he should. If he does end up having to tell someone, it would help to have the words.

He hopes it doesn’t come to that.

He hasn’t given up yet, and he still doesn’t plan to. The bad days are still changing, but he has started to recognize an unsettling pattern to them. The feeling is vague, strange, but his dizzy spells are less dizzy these days. Less dizzy, and more…untethered.

It’s disconcerting. He doesn’t like it.

His parents have never been to the other world. When they realized what they had in their home, they didn’t go looking for ways to get the child of their blood back. They kept Minghao and loved him just the same.

He isn’t entirely sure what that says about them, but he is grateful for it.

He doesn’t know that the untethered feeling is connected to the veil between worlds. He has no way of testing it, and he wouldn’t risk it if he did.

He doesn’t think the other world can drag him away. He doesn’t want to believe that it could. He hasn’t been there since…ever, maybe and certainly not since he can remember. He knows that the effects—the symptoms?—are getting worse, has come to expect it, but he almost hopes that it means he’s dying of exposure to the human world, if the alternative is being swept away.

It would be a betrayal, he thinks. After all the effort he has put into knowing his body, the way it moves, the things he can do with it, would it tear him from the world that contains his whole life?

He can’t do anything about it, if it does.

In the meantime, the signs are getting harder to hide. He can power through fatigue. He can rely on muscle memory to keep him upright if his vision fuzzes out while he’s dancing. He has been hiding all his life, a not-human soul in (mostly) human skin, and he is good at it.

He can’t hide the atmosphere collapsing in on him. He can’t hide his hearing fading into haunting whispers.

Sometimes, he thinks he hears a strange, lilting song.

0o0o0

They’re getting closer to debut, and Minghao has to wonder if their fans (and they will have fans. They have them already) will notice anything strange about him. His features aren’t inhuman, even if they take on an odd cast under the light of the full moon. His ears are oddly shaped, but they’re a human enough oddity. He doesn’t try to hide them. His earrings might be a challenge, if he thinks about it, which he usually doesn’t. _Look at me. You don’t know I have anything to hide._

The aversion to iron and steel might be harder. The salt…well, he’s seen the sort of thing inflicted on idols during secret cameras. He can only hope the sheer number of prank options will save him if he finds himself on the wrong end of one of those.

The internet is forever, of course. Little though their presence may be, Seventeen is already immortalized. A reality show and some poorly-lit clips from the practice room. A tiny legacy that they will always have, even if they fizzle out.

Kind of comforting, really. Kind of sad, too.

Minghao’s strangeness might show through. He’s caught on camera. His mannerisms will attract notice just as Jeonghan’s and Seungkwan’s and Mingyu’s will.

It isn’t impossible for there to be changelings among their fans. Minghao doesn’t know how common his kind are. (On his more pessimistic days, he thinks that he doesn’t know anything about his kind at all.)

He imagines someone in the vast online audience idols can draw, tapping through variety shows and fancams with fingers careful to touch only plastic and glass, noticing. Noticing anything.

It doesn’t bother him, which is almost a surprise.

Almost. He knows what he’s signing up for. He will be seen. He has been seen already.

If he is seen by people who might recognize themselves in him, that might be even better than lighting up their lives with dancing and happiness.

Yeah. Minghao wants to be famous. He wants it for every reason, and he wants it enough to risk everything.

“I’ve made it this far,” he says to himself in the quiet of the dorm at five in the morning. “I’ll make it to the end.”

The question is, how far away is the end? He’s been pushing himself to make it to debut, but what will change when they do? Everything, and nothing at all. He will still be here in the most human city he’s ever set foot in, breathing air that sometimes turns on him and choking down salt.

Food is holding less appeal as time wears on. Minghao eats anyway, because he needs to. He’s thinner than he was when he arrived, and he doesn’t need that getting worse.

0o0o0

Their debut showcase is far from the first time Minghao has been onstage. It is, however, the most important time, and he holds as still as he can as the coordis swarm around the room like bees, briskly getting all of them ready.

Their outfits are simple, and so is their makeup. Their hair is another story.

Minghao isn’t sure how he feels about this color on him. It doesn’t look bad, but it is unusual enough to look a little otherworldly, if only to himself.

 _Get over it,_ he tells himself. Idols have weird hair colors. It’s a normal thing. Debuting with a head of silver won’t make him look any more fae than he already does. His isn’t even the most noteworthy color—Jihoon’s hair is pink.

Minghao even gets a normal style. Seungcheol’s hair is piled high and so stiff with gel that it looks made of plastic. Chan keeps running fingers through his own hair while the stylists aren’t looking in a futile attempt to make the spikes sit a little more naturally.

Minghao soaks in the frantic backstage atmosphere, and it’s actually kind of nice. He catches about one word in ten from the buzz of chatter around him, but no one is talking directly to him, not with Junhui in the makeup chair.

He almost doesn’t notice the sounds fading out until he takes a breath and it catches in his throat.

_Oh, no._

Minghao stands slowly, in case of dizziness, and moves quicker when he finds his feet steady. He ducks out of the room and into the hallway, where there is almost as much crowding but less noise, and heads for the bathroom.

Inside, it’s quiet. He looks like an airbrushed version of himself in the mirror. More or less human than usual? Minghao can’t tell.

He takes a deep, deliberate breath and leans against the counter. The taps are metal. So is the door handle.

For a moment, he feels okay.

Then the whispers fade in, and he realizes his mistake. The bathroom is quiet, so his hearing seemed right.

He shoves himself upright, and his next breath hurts.

_Fuck. Not now._

Minghao steps back from the counter, staggers, and falls, hitting hard on one knee. He feels the impact but not the pain, the world falling away in layers around him. He gasps for air. The whispers grow louder, indistinct but insistent.

 _No. No, no_ —

Hands grip his shoulders, filtering through the haze, and he blinks as a face comes into focus before him. “Jihoon-hyung?” he mumbles.

“Remember your name,” Jihoon tells him. “You’re Xu Minghao.”

“Yeah,” Minghao says, and his tone is maybe rude, but he’s a little preoccupied.

“Minghao.” Jihoon squeezes. “You’re in the human world.”

Minghao sucks in a shuddering breath. “Hyung?” He misheard that. Misunderstood the words. He had to.

“This is the human world,” Jihoon repeats, and his eyes catch Minghao’s and hold them. “You live here. You belong here. You have a human name and a human face and a human family and a human goddamn job. Your name is Xu Minghao.”

“’m not human,” Minghao gasps out.

“Close enough,” Jihoon says, like it’s that simple. “Human life. Human name. You are more human than not, and this is the world you grew up in. It’s yours. _Breathe._ ”

Minghao gasps and gasps and doesn’t choke. Somehow, he no longer feels boxed in by the air around him. Jihoon’s hands on his shoulders anchor him. The whispers stopped sometime while Jihoon was talking.

“Minghao? Are you with me?” Jihoon asks, and Minghao realizes that Jihoon pronounces his name perfectly. Unusual, for a Korean speaker.

“How—”

Jihoon smiles at him, tight eyes and no teeth. “I get it.”

Minghao blinks at him. How on earth can Jihoon get it, unless… “You’re—”

“Yes. Just like you.”

Minghao shakes his head, unable to express why that isn’t true. How can Jihoon break the spell so easily? How can he just _say_ that they’re close enough to human for it to matter? “How?” is all he manages.

Even so, Jihoon seems to understand. “Names have power. Belief has power.” He squeezes Minghao’s shoulders and lets his hands drop. “We lived. We’re human enough.”

That’s ridiculous. Jihoon thinks they can just _believe_ their way out of slowly wasting away in a world with too much iron or not enough magic for their kind?

And yet. Minghao’s senses are working again. He can breathe easily. Jihoon just warded off an attack that might have made him late for their debut.

“Better?” Jihoon asks. He offers his hand and hauls Minghao up with surprising strength.

“Yes,” Minghao says, and he can hear the bafflement in his own voice.

Jihoon cracks a smile at him. “It’s easier if you don’t let yourself get too far fae.”

That sentence takes Minghao a second to puzzle out, both for grammar and for meaning. “We can choose,” he says incredulously. It can’t be that simple. It can’t.

“More or less.” Jihoon shrugs. “Come on. We’ll be late.”

They step back into the hallway and the bustle. One of the coordinators snaps her fingers at them. “There you are! Come on!”

“Remember,” Jihoon murmurs as they follow her. “Names have power. You’re human enough.”

Minghao swallows and nods. He can’t believe it, but maybe he could, eventually.

“Hey,” he says, stopping Jihoon for a moment. “Can you eat salt?”

Jihoon grins. “All day long.”

“Alright,” Minghao says. “Okay.”

Yeah. Maybe he can believe it. Not now, not yet, and he has more questions, but maybe this could work.

After all, Minghao isn’t about to give up now.

He follows Jihoon backstage and toward their debut.

**Author's Note:**

> This is another entry in the "clean up fics I already had written" effort. I say that, but this was only 600 words when I pulled it out of my fic fragment doc, and look where we are now. 
> 
> I didn't do any research on fairies for this. Everything in here about metal and honey and whatnot is pulled out of my general knowledge or my vague memories of reading Spiderwick Chronicles as a child.


End file.
